


Versailles

by Sethrial



Category: After the Storm - Hannah Birchwood & Key Dyson & Raymond Roach
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff, M/M, Not much plot, Plenty of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:14:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25075951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sethrial/pseuds/Sethrial
Summary: "Can you just move plants from wherever into your berth if you want?”“Probably not a good idea,” Anton says, raising his eyebrows. “For one thing, youdon't know which of the ship's plants need more or less light than they'd get in yourberth, and for another, just pick up a cabin plant from the Versailles’ gift shop, man."Rich takes a trip to the Versailles and picks up a couple plants.
Relationships: Rich/Basil
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Versailles

Rich spends the storm splitting his time between showing Trimmer around the Reliant in a series of trash-talk filled grand tours of his new home, hanging out in the _Frankenstem_ and eating better than he has in years, and getting chewed out by everyone he passes who can even nominally be called “in charge” for the stupid things he does when no one is sitting on him and making him stop. Rich gets pretty good at apologizing and at least sounding like he means it in the six days the storm takes. He also learns how to make his own sushi and gets a good look at the haunting series of scars where Trimmer was inexpertly hacked nearly in half and stapled back together.

It’s a lot, a hell of a storm, but Rich has a vastly more forgiving alcohol budget than he’s gotten used to, friends to weather it with, and enough free time that he can enjoy both without feeling guilty. Still, finally getting all of the small boats undocked and back out onto the rain swept but otherwise calm lake surface is enough of a relief that he’s only mostly pissed off at how long and painful the process is, instead of entirely. Undocking is slightly easier than docking in that there’s only a light drizzle to contend with, instead of the howling pre-storm rain and wind, and infinitely worse because no one seems to want to leave the fucking ship and get back to work. The process starts at dawn in a wet gray mess and ends slightly after midnight on a calm, cool night. By the end of it Rich is swearing under his breath at every citizen dumb enough to want their own little bullshit boat because they couldn’t be smart or sane enough to get a nice, steady posting on a nice, sensible 100 and stop making storms in general and his life in particular so much fucking harder than they need to be. He gets through it, though, and doesn’t throw anyone overboard or strip the wildly undeserved programming out of anyone’s houseboat in the eighteen hours it takes to empty his ship.

Rich falls into bed feeling like a seized up engine after nearly three straight shifts of work with only the occasional break for food and to sit down. He’s overheated, aching, and feels like if he has to do anything more complicated than get to his berth and go to sleep he’s going to combust and take half the ship out with him. He manages not to completely self-destruct on the way up, and doesn’t even yell at anyone when there’s a jam of exhausted people at the main stairwell out of the garage bay. Just puts his head down, waits out the crowd, and promises himself that tomorrow will be a new day.

  
  


Rich wakes up feeling good, better. The Reliant is calm and steady under him, there’s a bright circle of sunlight coming in through his window, and after a long, luxurious stretch and his morning shot he feels just bone deep good, like the storm and all its accessory bullshit is entirely behind him. It’s a lot later than he usually wakes up, but he’s earned a lazy morning, and there’s nothing wrong with taking third shift instead of second. If he’s going to have a slow morning, and he’d very much like to, he needs a long, hot shower and a lot of breakfast, instead of the five minute scrub off and four blocks on the go he usually gives himself when he wakes up at, fuck, it’s already 0800.

He checks his messages in the shower and finds a priority email from the captain giving all nonessential crew an extra rest day today, thanking them for their excellent work yesterday, and offering a reward for anyone who can streamline launch procedures, because last night was disorganized in a way they haven’t seen in years. Okay, so Rich guesses it isn’t supposed to take eighteen hours and be miserable the entire time. He’ll bang his head against the problem later, maybe see if Basil has any ideas. They can brainstorm about it.

If he has the day off, Rich isn’t going to waste it. His berth is better than it was when he moved here, and a lot better than he ever managed to get his living quarters on the _Sympacato_ , but it’s still not great. There’s a distinct lack of color and life that’s familiar after years on a hell boat, but Rich still doesn’t like that his walls are bare and he still doesn’t have any plants of his own. He has _shelves_. He has a _window_. He has actual god damn sunlight and space and the freedom to put whatever he wants wherever he wants, so why in the hell has he not gotten any plants yet?

“Morning,” Rich pauses shaving to tell Basil as he walks past

Basil is shirtless and bleary-eyed, fresh from sleep and headed toward the showers if the watertight glove on his arm is any indication. “Morning. What’s up?”

“Just enjoying the view,” Rich says, looking Basil over. He’s so cute when he first wakes up. He’s cute all the time, honestly, but there’s something unique about him with wild, sleep mussed hair and a muzzy lack of focus that really melts Rich.

“Mm?” Basil looks down at himself. “Oh. Yeah. Didn’t have any clean sleep clothes so I just, uh, y’know.” He flushes lightly.

Basil sleeps naked when he hasn’t done laundry in a while. Rich files that fact away to think about later and focuses, even though it would be the easiest thing in the world to say fuck his plans and spend the day fooling around with Basil. It would be fun, but he has things to do today. “Do you want to go to the _Versailles_ today?”

Basil blinks and squints at the sudden subject change, struggling to keep up. “Like the garden ship?”

“No, like the country,” Rich snarks. “I thought we could take a little road trip across the ocean. How’s your French?”

“Dick,” he says without heat. “Sure, I’ll go to the _Versailles_ with you. Did you want to do the tour or just walk around?”

“I mostly wanted to get a couple plants from the gift shop. There’s a tour?” Rich asks.

“They added it like three, four years ago. It’s this really cool historical look at the ship and how she fit into the fleet over the years. You know she was the first agriculture boat that ever set sail?”

“Really?” Rich asks. He hasn’t been to the _Versailles_ since he was ten and his dad wanted to do family outings more often, since Angela was starting her cadet training soon and they weren’t going to be all together again regularly for at least a couple years, maybe longer depending on what Rich and Athena wanted to do with their lives.

Basil tries to gather his hair back away from his face, but it all springs forward again as soon as he lets it go. “Yeah. Way back when the fleet was like fifteen canoes and the _Washington_ they got this crazy big luxury yacht made out of some kind of weird space material they straight up can’t make anymore, and it grew almost all of their food for a couple years.” He tries to control his hair again with even less success and ends up with a tangle of fluffy curls hanging right in his face.

“We can do the tour. That sounds really cool. Now go get a shower, baby boy. You’re a mess.” Rich ruffles his hair and sends him off to get cleaned up.

  
  


Basil drives them over. He’s actually a pretty good driver and makes the flight with minimal dipping and swaying. They see the sun glinting off the _Versailles_ long before they can see the ship herself. She’s occasionally called the jewel of the fleet, when people feel like making metaphors, and she earned the name. Her hull is as strong as steel, but looks like polished glass in the sunlight, and Rich can see the colorful, healthy plants crowding the inside. He also sees a couple little cleaner bots crawling around the outside, keeping the glass clean and bright. Basil parks the deck hopper and they take the entrance stairs down from the sun deck to the bottom level of the 150 crew pleasure cruiser.

“Welcome to _Versailles_. Are you boys here for the tour?” A tiny woman in a sundress asks when they get to the bottom of the stairs. They’re underwater right now, and it’s about ten degrees cooler than the climb down was. Rich can see out into the lake a little ways, through the clear hull. The shifting streams of sunlight coming down through the water are beautiful, and in the distance he can see some tiny shapes that are either huge fish or selkies, swimming lazily just below the surface.

“Yeah, Rich hasn’t done it before,” Basil says.

“Awesome!” she smiles. “I’ve been dying of boredom down here alone. Everyone else so far today just wants to see the gardens. Something about storms makes people plant crazy. Anyway, this way please. _Versailles_ was first commissioned by late century trillionaire Yates Henry Clem 85 years ago, and at the time was named _The Family Jewels 2_ , charming, I know, after the sinking of a nearly identical ship some years prior. There’s an ongoing project to search the lake bed for _The Family Jewels_ in the hopes of finding a second indestructible ship for the Fleet’s use, but as you can probably guess, it’s not easy to find a transparent boat underwater, and the project has so far been unsuccessful.”

She leads the way around the bottom deck, giving them an overview of the history of the boat, when it was traded for, what it cost, and who came with it. It was always used as a greenhouse, but in the beginning it was an ag ship, not a botanical garden, and was named the _Agrarica_.

“The early fleet refugee’s diet was vastly different from ours today. They received weekly rations of fresh and dried or pickled fish, russet or sweet potatoes, corn meal, and seasonally available fruits and vegetables. Rations at the time broke down to an average of 1500 calories per person per day-”

Rich makes a horrified face. One block a meal is what small children eat, not adults. “They starved them?”

“By today’s standards, yes. At the time, though, those were extremely generous rations for this part of the world, and being made up of largely high-nutrient foods, not synthetic protein, the early citizens of the fleet had some of the lowest rates of malnutrition in the world. Most families also supplemented their diets with home grown fruits and vegetables, for an added few hundred calories every day. They were still an average of four inches shorter than their modern grandchildren, and have trended as having slightly shorter life spans than pre-collapse standards. Next time you see your grandparents, ask them about the early days of the fleet and what they lived through before they came here. They have some fascinating stories to share.”

“I bet.” Rich doesn’t bother to tell her that neither of them have living grandparents to ask. He takes Basil’s hand and runs his thumb over his knuckles. Basil squeezes back and smiles a small, tight lipped smile at him.

“On to the next exhibit!” she announces, and leads them to a plate of clear glass standing on a table with some tools. “This is a piece of the ship, a window from the gift shop, if I remember correctly. The vast majority of the ship was built as a single piece and is completely indestructible through normal means. _Versailles_ is made of a material called Zero Steel, a space age material that can only be manipulated when it reaches a temperature of absolute zero. At any other temperature it forms a solid mass that, at three centimeters thick, can’t be scratched, dented, broken, bent, melted, or destroyed by any modern means. Go ahead. Do your worst.” She gestures to the tools.

There’s a drill, hammer, chisel, taser, and steel spike laid out in a neat row in front of the pane of Zero Steel. Basil tries with the chisel first, dragging it down the pane in a line, then feels the line to see if it scratched it. The taser leaves a small black mark that wipes off cleanly with no damage to the piece. “Cool. Rich, hit it with the hammer.”

Rich hits it with the hammer with middling force, enough that it would leave a dent in sheet steel, but not enough to completely destroy anything.

“You can hit it harder than that, big guy. C’mon. See if you can break it,” the tour guide eggs him on.

Okay then. Rich puts his shoulder into it and slams the hammer into the pane with as much force as he can get on a single stroke. He can pound holes in solid steel with this kind of swing. There’s a horrible crunching noise and the sound of metal shearing. Cold washes through him and he jerks back. “Fuck! I’m sorry!” Shit, if his stupid strength broke the unbreakable exhibit he’s probably going to get kicked off the boat, with no stop in the gift shop for plants. He didn’t even get to see the gardens!

“That poor hammer.” The tour guide rescues it from his grip and examines it. The head has bent completely back and there’s a smashed flat dent in the rounded face. When she tries to bend it back straight, the head comes completely off. “An excellent try, though! I’ll let maintenance know we need a new hammer once we’re done with the tour. Good job! Do you want to try with the drill?”

“I’m- I’m good,” Rich says. “I didn’t crack it or anything, did I?” The pane looks fine from his angle, but he doesn’t really know what the material is supposed to look like or how to tell if it’s close to breaking.

She pats his arm. “It’s fine, honey. Zero Steel is made to withstand a lot more force than a supersoldier with a hammer. It’s rated for asteroid impacts. Fun story, we actually used to have visitors try this on a patch of the hull, but it made them nervous, ‘cause, you know, it’s wet outside, so we found a piece that comes off and moved it down here for people to play with instead.”

“Yeah, I can see how that would make people nervous,” Basil says. He’s rubbing Rich’s back with his gloved hand, gently up and down his spine. It’s soothing, and after a few deep breaths and some more watching the light slice down through the water, Rich is good to get back to the tour.

The tour has moved on without him, and the guide is explaining the various roles the _Versailles_ has played in the fleet since she was decommissioned as an agriculture boat.

“Her tenure as a genetics lab was an interesting time for scientific advancement in the fleet, but after Mad Monty, real name Montague Hue, murdered two fellow geneticists over an argument about the practical application of his experiments, it was decided that too many high-pressure individuals working in close quarters was a recipe for disaster, and the current standard of giving engineers their own smaller work space was put into place. There are rumors that this ship is haunted by the ghosts of the murdered scientists, but I can neither confirm nor deny seeing spectral figures watering the plants at night.”

“Creepy,” Basil comments. “How were they killed?”

“Poisoned carrot juice!” she says brightly.

“...Carrot juice?”

“Briefly extremely popular around thirty years ago. You can still get it on most ag ships, but the rest of the fleet doesn’t like it anymore, for some reason.”

“Weird.”

“Right? Anyway, the _Feed Me Seymour_ was decommissioned as a genetics lab, gutted, and sat empty for nearly five years while the people in charge argued about what to do with her. Eventually it was filled with plants, renamed again to _Versailles_ , and recommissioned as a vacation destination for citizens on their days off. She’s been doing a steady trade since then, sometimes in an educational capacity, sometimes as a source of domestic plant life, sometimes just as somewhere lovely and green to wander around. And that’s the tour! Any questions?”

“That was fun,” Rich says.

“Question,” Basil raises his hand. “What was she called when she was between names?”

“She reverted back to the name shaped into her prow, for lack of anything better to call her, while she was in dry dock. I’m told it was a bit awkward to hear people reference _The Family Jewels_ in serious, official meetings.”

“That sounds _hilarious_ ,” Basil comments.

“What do you guys do during storms?” Rich asks.

“For the most part we weather them just fine out on the lake. _Versailles_ has the tonnage of a 150 crew, even though we only keep a permanent crew of 50 to take care of the plants and teach visitors. We have no way of dry docking anyone else here, so the crew just gets a few days off to do maintenance while it storms. For anything over a category four we dock on the Washington and open our doors to her crew while we’re there. We almost always sell out the gift shop while we’re docked, too,” she adds like an afterthought.

“People get a little plant crazy?” Rich asks.

“Something about being locked inside.” She shrugs.

“I’ve been feeling that for the last few days,” he admits. “I’m Rich, by the way.” He holds his hand out and down for her to shake.

“Mandy,” she introduces herself and takes his hand lightly.

“Basil,” Basil shakes her hand too.

“Very fun, and very nice to meet both of you. You did want to see the gardens too, right? You weren’t just here for a history lesson?”

“We were hoping to,” Basil says.

“Well, the garden tour is self guided, and you can take as long as you want, so enjoy! We actually spent this storm putting in some more seating for visitors.” She turns serious, unusually so for someone who has otherwise been nothing but bubbly and fun. “I do have to warn you before you go up, though, _Versailles_ is a greenhouse. It gets hot and it stays hot. The gardens have a year round indoor temperature of 30 degrees or warmer, so pay attention to how you feel and how much you’re sweating. If you start to feel dizzy or nauseous, notice you’re not sweating, or suddenly feel cold, please follow the yellow markers on the floor to our air conditioned rehydration stations to cool off and recover. If something does happen and you can’t make it somewhere cooler, you can call security and they’ll bring a medic with them to help you.”

“Yes ma’am,” Rich says meekly, not sure what to do about her turning suddenly so sharp and serious.

Her face gentles. “I’m sure the two of you will be fine. I just have to tell everyone who visits and make sure they know the procedure if something happens. It’s just basic common sense risk mitigation that a lot of people don’t consider until it’s too late, so we bring it up before it’s strictly necessary. But we _do_ have a few cases of heat exhaustion every year that we _really_ want to keep from turning more dangerous.”

“Has anyone ever died?” Basil asks.

“Not since I’ve worked here, no. I don’t think since we put in the hydration stations, actually. Most people are good at taking care of themselves, as long as you give them the opportunity,” she says.

“Yeah, I’ve heard _most_ people are pretty good about that,” Basil says with exaggerated lightness, squeezing Rich’s hand.

Rich squeezes back hard enough to feel the polymer plates click against each other. He doesn’t want to do this right now, doesn’t want to rekindle a fight that he’s been done with for a week. But everyone seems determined to take stripes off him over one stupid mistake.

“Well, the gardens are just up those stairs, through the door that doesn’t say authorized personnel only,” Mandy points them in the right direction a little awkwardly. The two of them have been standing and having their silent argument for just a second longer than is polite, and she’s looking from one of them to the other like she’s trying to figure out what she’s done to spark whatever is going on between them.

“Thank you so much,” Rich says politely. “The tour was a lot of fun. I learned a lot.” He tows Basil up the stairs to the intersection of three doors. Two have signs asking them to keep out, and the third is plate glass and foggy, with a wall of green on the other side.

“Rich,” Basil starts.

“Can we not? We’ve had this fight three times. Do we really have to have it again, here, now?”

“You’re just-”

“ _Really?”_

“One thing. Please,” Basil asks.

Rich doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t stop him either.

“You… kind of take a lot of really unnecessary risks. Like getting drunk at the mall, and that Burton guy, and drinking on duty, and then that shit with the other ship this week. And, like, I didn’t think about it until she mentioned common sense risk mitigation, but I’m running the numbers right now, like, you know.” He taps the side of his head with his knuckles.

“Okay?” Rich asks.

“And I dunno. It just seems like your risk assessment software is running buggy.”

Rich wants to deny it, to say he’s fine and there’s nothing wrong, but Basil isn’t completely wrong. He’s still tuned to a different situation where danger was real, present, and immediate. Assholes with knives, dark corners, being caught alone and unarmed could all turn lethal if he was unlucky. Nothing as simple and relaxed as having a drink in the afternoon was likely to kill him, or even get him in trouble before, but the _Reliant_ is different, a new system, and he hasn’t adjusted as well as he probably should have by now. “Yeah, kind of,” he sighs. “I’m not going to let myself get dehydrated and die in a greenhouse, though. I’m not _completely_ dumb.”

“I know you’re not. I’m just… It’s stupid. I just… care about you,” Basil admits.

Well. Well. “Thanks,” Rich says, too high and too tight in his chest and not looking at Basil because he has no idea what his face is doing or what shade of red he is or when he’s going to go back to normal.

“Do you want to go look at the plants now?” Basil isn’t looking at him either, when Rich sneaks a peek. He’s flushed too, ruddy across his cheeks, staring at the authorized personnel only sign like it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever read.

“Sure. And I promise to debug my risk assessment software at the earliest possible convenience,” Rich jokes.

Basil snorts, entirely undignified, and pushes the door open to the _Versailles_ greenhouse.

It’s… incredible. Rich has to take a second, standing in the doorway like an idiot, to let the damp heat wash over him in a wave and breathe in the sweet, supple smell of living green things. He grew up with plants, of course. Their boat had a couple little residential garden beds, and Angela had a green thumb phase right after Athena was born and launched a one-woman crusade to fill their home with micro greens and spices. But except for those beautiful couple hours with Liam on the _Frankenstem_ , and he’ll openly admit to being a little distracted at the time, Rich hasn’t been around more than the odd scattering of plants in over four years.

He desperately wants to fall face forward into the nearest shelf of pots and disappear into green, drown in it and never come up, but that’s a stupid thought and he’s not going to give it any more space in his brain. Rich lets the door swing shut behind him and gets a real look around. The room is mostly ferns and hanging vines that wind around and grip white plastic statues molded to look like old world carved marble. Rich probably wouldn’t notice they weren’t real stone, except that one unusually possessive plant has lifted the hollow plastic off the bench beneath it and is in the process of strangling it in mid-air.

Rich touches the info screen on the possessive vine and learns that it’s native to a tiny volcanic island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, is critically endangered, and blooms with large yellow flowers when it feels like blooming at all.

“Rich, check it out,” Basil calls from one row deeper in the room. “I found my flower twin.”

He’s standing next to a flowering bush covered in huge, fluffy, pale pink flowers with darker pink speckles. Rich checks the info on the plant and it tells him that this is a rare mutation, likely caused by a radiation storm during germination. “Let’s see if we can figure out how old it is. Maybe you have the same mutation,” he says playfully.

“I bet we do. It’s the too-gorgeous-to-exist-naturally mutation. Liam could probably pinpoint exactly where in my DNA it occurred.”

The plant is just over ten years old and was grown from a seed traded as part of a gift of goodwill from one aquatic nation to another, from the same tiny island nation in the Pacific.

“That’s really cool. I wonder what it’s like in Hawaii.”

“Hot, I’m guessing,” Basil says. Part of his hair has escaped and is standing up in a frizzy fluff around his face. “Probably humid.”

“Probably.”

They explore the rest of the tropical room and read the information on the interesting flowers and ferns. There’s one that’s taller than Rich that has been there since the genetics lab days and was briefly in the care of Admiral Clearwater, donated to the _Versailles_ again when it was renamed, and has been a resident of the greenhouse since. There’s a note that they can pick up one of its much smaller descendants in the gift shop and grow their own potted superfern.

“You done in here?” Basil asks when they’ve done a lap of the room and seen everything there is to see.

“Pretty much, yeah. Next floor?” The space flows well and a maze of aisles and shelves has led them to another door, marked as stairs.

“Sure. Do you want to check out the hydration station first? You’re pretty pink.”

Rich is fine, not dehydrated or overhot at all, but he can feel himself dripping sweat and venting heat like he normally only does on his board, when it’s time for him to fall in the lake a couple times to cool off. “Why not? Let’s see what they have.”

They go upstairs to minimize backtracking and follow the yellow arrows on the floor to a well marked door unobtrusively set in the north wall of the slightly less humid, but still extraordinarily hot room devoted to flowering plants. The hydration station is small, about the size of a standard berth on a 100, with opaque steel walls instead of clear Zero Steel, a table with five chairs, and two small electric coolers stacked on top of each other. There’s a tap with paper cups to one side and a small snack dispenser. The room is chilly after the overwhelming heat downstairs, and it feels nice to sit down. Rich gets an apple and some water and settles in to relax for a minute.

Basil looks in the coolers. “Drinks and cold packs. Looks like mostly tea and lemonade.” He chooses a jar of iced tea and sits with Rich, alternating rolling it across his forehead and taking sips.

“Cold tea,” Rich makes a face.

“It’s not that bad, better than room temperature. Good electrolytes and stuff. You wanna try it?” Basil offers him the jar and Rich tries a sip. It doesn’t taste like a whole lot, mostly the mouth and throat feeling of a cold drink and just enough bitter tea taste to be clearly not water.

“I’ll stick to hot.”

“More for me.” Basil shrugs and takes another, longer drink.

There are posters on the wall about recognizing and treating the stages of various heat injuries, and a reminder to call security if they think they need professional help.

“Hey,” Basil says after another minute of drinking and reading posters.

“Hey yourself.”

“Is this, uh. I meant to ask earlier. Is this a date?”

“Do you… want it to be a date?” Rich asks.

“I don’t… _not_ want it to be a date,” he says shyly.

“Then I guess it’s not _not_ a date.”

“Oh.” Basil hides his sudden flush by taking a gulp of tea. “Okay.”

“C’mere,” Rich pulls him in for a kiss that does nothing for how red his cheeks are turning.

“ _Oh.”_

“Is that okay?” Rich asks. He really needs to remember that Basil is new at this, and that he isn’t going anywhere soon. They have time. They don’t have to rush.

“I’ve never been on a date before,” he admits.

Rich snorts. He wouldn’t have, would he? Basil got moved to the Reliant when he was barely starting to hit puberty and instantly became the universal baby brother. In the seven years since then he probably hasn’t found a ton of age appropriate people to go out with, or people who don’t remember him when he was five feet tall and squeaky voiced. Not that Rich has much room to talk. People on the Sympacato weren’t exactly wining and dining him, and before that he was in the same boat as Basil. Literally.

“Shut up,” Basil mumbles, face going an even deeper red.

“I’m not laughing at you, baby boy. I’m just remembering that I’ve gone on, like, maybe two more dates than you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. There was a girl I met online when I was thirteen, and we went on one really awkward lunch kind-of date with our dads at the other end of the boat watching us and swapping embarrassing baby stories. We could hear them the entire time. It was _horrible_.” Rich hasn’t thought about her in years. He doesn’t even remember her name, or anything about her except that she had red hair and freckles.

Basil snickers. “What about the other one?”

“I got caught _fraternizing_ during cadet training and was nearly kicked out on the spot. And that’s as much as I really want to think about that part of my life!”

“That bad, huh?”

“He was a few years older than me and convinced me that all the cool kids skipped their suppressants and played hooky on their rest days,” Rich explains.

Basil blinks, crunching the numbers. “Weren’t you, like, fourteen?” he asks.

“And that’s as much as I really want to think about that part of my life!” Rich repeats with false cheer.

He takes it for what it’s worth and sighs. “I remember being fourteen. I was _so dumb_. They need to invent a new word for stupid, because I was _so fucking stupid_.”

“Testosterone gives you brain damage, news at 1800,” Rich jokes.

“I thought you were the coolest thing in the world,” Basil admits. “You were _so tall_ and could lift heavy shit no problem, like some kind of superhero. And you knew all this cool shit about fabrication processes and illegal stuff and, like, how to get around the under-18 blocks on vids and stuff.”

“Absolutely brain damaged.” Rich shakes his head. “Have you had your implants checked recently? I think they might have overheated.”

Basil’s eyes go tight and troubled, and he takes another gulp of tea instead of snarking back.

“Sorry.”

“It’s just… not funny yet. I was scared, everyone was scared, and no one knew what was happening, and you weren’t moving unless Trimmer _hurt_ you, and you wouldn’t let us in to fix it. And then Ben said it was over, but you still didn’t- There were two days where I didn’t know if you would wake up, or who you would be when you did. I didn’t know if you were gone, and all anyone could do was sit around and _wait_.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”

“Just. Let it sit for a little while before you try to make it funny. It still hurts. It’s going to hurt for a while. Just… chill.”

“I’m trying,” Rich tries to keep the pain out of his voice and off his face. He mostly succeeds. He finishes his water and throws away his cup and apple core to be composted in silence. “So, yeah,” he tries again when he feels a little less like an asshole. Basil has almost finished his tea and looks less angry. “First real date, first good date. Do you want to just call this both of our first dates and try to make it not suck?”

“I can live with that,” Basil says. He drains the last of his cold tea, rinses the jar, and leaves it upside down in the sink to drain so it doesn’t grow slime. Hopefully that’s what’s expected and someone will come by to collect and sanitize it eventually, and they aren’t being jerks by leaving their dishes out. For a room that’s wallpapered with signage there’s almost nothing here about the drinks, other than a note on the fridge to please take one.

  
  


The second floor of the gardens is wall to wall flowers, all blooming beautifully in the heat. Rich goes through and reads descriptions for the interesting ones. Two of the central aisles are all the same type of flower, all orchids, not that anyone would know at a glance. There are more types of orchids than there are types of dogs, by his estimation, and they come in more colors than Rich knew existed in the natural world.

He spends a long minute examining one that looks like a flower shaped hole in the world. The Vanta Orchid is so black he can’t see any detail on the surface of its flowers and has to rotate around the pot to get an idea of how it’s shaped. It’s cool, and according to the information screen is the only naturally occurring source of the darkest material on the planet. It was specially engineered thirty years ago and has to be fed a special diet of chemical fertilizer to keep its color.

Basil has gotten distracted by the roses and is methodically moving back and forth down the row, sniffing one then another in a pattern that probably makes sense to him. Rich thinks he looks like a confused bumble bee.

“What are you up to?” Rich asks after watching him backtrack to the same flower for the third time.

“What does this smell like to you?” Basil points to the rose he’s been obsessing over, a fluffy red one in full bloom.

Rich sniffs it. “Flowers? Roses? I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t smell like apples?”

He smells it again, getting a bigger sniff. “I guess a little. Why?”

“I’m trying to decide which I like better, this or the regular rose smell. I want one for my room. It says they’re both for sale upstairs, and I can’t tell if a plant that smells like apples is cool or not.”

Rich shrugs. “It’s a conversation starter. But so is a regular rose if it gets big enough. I dunno.”

“Do you think Liam would like it?” Basil asks.

“He’d probably like seeing your room _clean_ more,” Rich comments.

Basil wrinkles his nose up and glares at Rich. “I cleaned.”

“You did, and I’m proud of you for taking the first step toward not living in a garbage heap. Now start cleaning every day and more boys than me will want to spend the night.”

Basil shoves his face back into the flowers and grumbles to himself. Rich catches “Picky ass,” and “See if I don’t,” in the muttering.

“I’m just saying.”

“Well say something else,” Basil snaps without any real anger.

“I like the apple rose. You should get one. It’s cool.”

  
  


The third floor is comparatively cooler, barely 30 degrees and shady, compared to the bright and humid 33 downstairs. It also has triple high ceilings and is full of trees that block a lot of sunlight from the top deck above. There are less distinct aisles here, more open paths between planters thick with trees and shrubs, and some benches put in here and there in the shade.

Rich sits on one of the bigger benches and stretches his legs out across the path. When he looks up through the trees he can see the sun deck and the shoes of people walking around. There’s one couple doing laps back and forth from one end of the deck to the other, one of them barefoot, one in boots.

The trees are incredible. They’re huge and healthy, some of their trunks as big around as Rich’s thigh, growing all the way up to the ceiling almost twelve meters up. There are notes that in the wild some of them would grow to be thirty meters tall, but these have been carefully bred and cultivated to fit the space and not try to grow through the deck. Rich watches the edges of the leaves between the one he’s sitting under and the one in the planter the toes of his boots are pressed against. They never quite touch, no matter how the artificial breeze blows them. There are always just a few inches between their edges.

After a little exploring, Basil sits with Rich and leans his head on his shoulder. Rich ends up with his arm around Basil’s waist with a hand on his hip bone. It feels good to touch him, casually, comfortably, to sit in the shade and let skin brush against skin. Rich sneaks his fingers up under Basil’s shirt and feels the electric warmth of smooth, bare skin under his hand. He’s a little bit sweaty, which isn’t great, but other than that it’s nice.

“It’s weird to think that there are places out there that look like this, and no one is responsible for it or made it or anything. It just happened,” Basil says.

“Mm. Have you ever thought about going on a trip, south maybe, to see what the rest of the world is like?” Rich has been thinking about Katrina and some of the things she says, about things he does that are apparently weird. She’s been to so many places and met so many people. There’s a whole world out there. It's strange to think about how big it is, when the lake already feels endless and is just a tiny fraction of it.

Basil shrugs. “Not really. You’ve seen news feeds from Chicago and Detroit, and those entertainment vids from Hollywood and New York. People are crazy out there, and there’s always something new to do on the lake. I know it’s not super exciting here, but I don’t really want to risk the worst the rest of the world has to offer. Sorry if that’s lame. I just don’t.”

“No, that’s fair.” The fleet has its own problems, like Mad Monty and the poisoned carrot juice, or the toxic ships that are getting disbanded as they’re discovered, but compared to the war zones and gang murders and bodies piling up around the rest of the world, it’s a floating paradise. Rich wants to go see more of the world, but he can handle a little trouble if it comes his way. Basil is a baseline human, not made to get in a fight and come out annoyed at worst. He could get seriously hurt if something goes wrong.

Basil adjusts and makes a face. “You’re really sweaty.”

“You are too,” Rich points out. He pats his hip and gets a wet slapping noise.

“Yeah, but- Yeah, alright, I guess so,” Basil says with a sigh.

“But what?”

“I was gonna say “but it’s my sweat,” and that’s not an argument. Not really,” Basil says. “Ready to get out of here? We still need to hit the gift shop.”

“‘Nother minute,” Rich says. He pulls Basil closer and gives him a long, sweaty kiss. It’s not the best he’s ever had, a little wet, a little musky smelling, and Basil’s escaped curls tickle like nothing else, but it’s still really nice to get to kiss him basically whenever he wants. “Now I’m ready,” he says when he pulls away.

  
  


The stairs up lead directly into the gift shop, so they don’t have to hunt it down. It’s air conditioned and blessedly cool, but other than that and the fact that the plant covered shelves have price tags on them, there’s no difference between it and the lower two garden levels.

Rich finds a vent to stand under for a few minutes. His shirt is soaked and is starting to feel clammy as it cools. Moving air helps it dry enough that he doesn’t feel disgusting when he looks for a couple plants for his berth.

Basil has made a bee-line for the rose display and is smelling them, searching for the apple one. He’ll be fine on his own. That leaves Rich with the entire shop to explore and no idea where to start, or what kind of light his berth gets, or how often he’ll need to water anything, or how big these plants will grow, or if they’ll need repotting or fertilizer, or _anything at all about plants_.

“Can I help you?” a voice asks from his elbow.

Rich jumps a mile and lands with a stumble several feet away, arms up to defend himself. There’s a short, weedy dude with glasses biting his lip like he’s trying not to laugh at the sight of someone Rich’s size startling like a kitten that got snuck up on. Rich lets his arms drop, feeling stupid. “Uh. Hi. Just thinking about buying a plant.”

“Well you’re in the right place,” he says with a much kinder smile. “I’m Anri. Sorry for sneaking up on you. My boss tells me to make more noise when I walk, but I really thought you saw me coming.”

Rich nods and tries to calm his racing heart. He’s sweating all over again and can’t even blame the heat this time. “Yeah. Yeah, no worries. You sell plants?”

“In theory! Most people are just here to walk around, but I get rid of a couple-few every day. Can I help you find anything? You look a little lost, no offense.”

“No, I am. I have no idea what I want, or what will survive in my berth.”

Anri nods. “Alright, I can probably help you. Flowering plant or non? Sun lamp or window, and how big? Do you want a desk or floor plant? How good are you about watering regularly?”

“I actually want a couple, one on the desk and one on the floor, maybe. Window, about yea big, and I can water as soon as I know it needs it,” Rich explains.

“Oh cool! That opens up pretty much the entire selection of indirect sunlight plants.” He starts walking toward another section of the gift shop, where wooden partitions have been attached to the Zero Steel walls and ceiling to make a small, shady area. “It knocks out most of your succulents and a solid chunk of your bigger flowering plants, but a lot of those are needy brats anyway and more trouble than they’re worth, trying to keep happy in the winter. Tell me, how do you feel about bonsai?”

“What’s bonsai?”

“An excellent response!” he says, and shows Rich to a shelf of potted trees the size of his hands. Anri explains what a bonsai is and how they’re grown. Some of them are bushes trimmed and shaped to look like tiny little trees. Some are _actually itty bitty trees_ that have been either genetically engineered, or just specially grown in a way that makes them stay tiny as long as they’re cared for properly.

“Have I correctly assumed that you’re a man who needs a project?” Anri asks when Rich is holding a tree that fits in the palm of his hand.

“Uh,” Rich says. Because yes, something he could work on that’s productive and not just his job, hover boarding, or endlessly cleaning his berth would be nice, but he doesn’t know how to feel about it being written so clearly on his face.

“Because a young bonsai in need of shaping and growing is a _project_. One that requires care, patience, and a touch of artistry. Do you feel up to the challenge?”

“Maybe?”

“We have books on it, too. Digital and hard copy,” Anri says.

“I… don’t want to fuck it up,” Rich admits. The little bonsai here are so pretty. He doesn’t want to ruin one because he thought it would be easier than it was.

Anri shrugs. “If you fuck up a bonsai you just have a potted shrub, and that’s fine too. Or you can buy one that’s already established and just take care of it as it grows. It’s easier, but you get less say in the final product.” He replaces the itty bitty tree in Rich’s palm with a larger one that takes both hands to hold. “This is a wisteria. She needs a ton of water in the spring and summer, and will take a little shaping and pruning to make sure she doesn’t get out of control, but other than that isn’t hard to grow. Her screen will let you know what she wants and when.”

“She’s gorgeous,” Rich says. He can see making space on his desk for her. It’s not like he uses the surface for much, anyway, other than eating and something to tap his fingers on while he thinks. “I’ll think some more about growing my own, once I learn what she likes.” He cradles the tiny tree in one arm. “Now what can I put on my floor?”

Rich gets a miniature super fern for the corner next to his drawers, the wisteria bonsai for his desk, and he picks up a little pot of ribbon grass because it’s cute and is labeled as an easy beginner plant. Even if he completely screws up the other two, he doesn’t know how he’s going to manage to break _ribbon grass_ without intentionally chucking it out the window. Even then, it’s supposed to like as much water as it can get, and will probably be happy as a clam floating around in the lake. Maybe a selkie will adopt it. Maybe this is a stupid train of thought that he needs to stop following and just buy his damned plants.

He gets a digital copy of the bonsai book too, Basil gets his apple pie rose bush (and a flirtatious comment from Anri that he made a good choice), and Anri lets them borrow a hover shelf to get their purchases out to the deck hopper.

“He was nice,” Basil says while they’re loading their plants into the cargo area.

“He was a menace,” Rich says, not really meaning it. He tells Basil about Anri startling him and trying to talk him into growing his own bonsai.

“Little guys are intense. Have you ever seen Anton when he gets a new hobby?”

“I don’t think so. Why? What’s he like?” Rich asks.

Basil shakes his head. “Last winter was knitting. He learned how to make hats, and everyone on board got at least one new hat. Then he figured out mittens and all of IST got custom mittens. He would _hound_ people asking what their favorite colors were and trying to measure his hands against theirs.”

“That’s really sweet. No one has ever made me mittens. Do you think I could convince him to pick it back up?”

“Probably, if you want a thousand hats.”

“I do,” Rich says seriously. “I want one thousand hats. And one pair of mittens.”

“You are _such_ a nerd,” Basil says, climbing into the driver’s seat.

Rich thumps down in the passenger seat. “Yeah but I’m your nerd.”

“You _are_ , aren’t you?” Basil has no right to sound so delighted. “Buckle up, nerd.”

“Yes dear,” Rich jokes, and leans over to kiss Basil’s cheek.

They talk about nothing much on the ride back. Rich invites Basil to go boarding with him, Basil explains that he has the balance of a drunk toddler when it comes to zero-g sports, and Rich promises not to laugh at him every time he eats lake. No one is good on their first day. Well, Katrina might have been, but she definitely doesn’t count.

They land with barely a thunk and get their plants out of the back. Rich gets the two big ones, Basil’s rose bush and his floor fern, and Basil takes care of his wisteria and ribbon grass. He doesn’t mind doing the heavy lifting, and he doesn’t feel like that’s a supersoldier thing that he shouldn’t be making himself do just because he’s specifically built as strong as a human can be. There’s nothing wrong with carrying something heavy for his friend who only has one load bearing arm, when he has an entire load bearing body, but he’s still thinking about it hard enough that he doesn’t notice James around the leafy bushes and nearly bumps into him in the hall.

“Watch it,” James snaps. “Aren’t you supposed to be _minding your manners_ or something?”

“Sorry,” Rich says without feeling. “Didn’t see you down there.”

James looks between him and Basil, taking in their matching armfuls of plants, sweaty hair and shirts, and the general all-over rumpledness they both have. “How was your _date_?” He asks, like that’s supposed to be cutting or clever.

Basil turns a ruddy pink, but Rich just shrugs the arm with the rose in it. “Great. Thanks for asking. We went to the _Versailles_ , saw the plants, adopted a couple.” The rose starts to slip so he hefts it again and grabs it by the bottom. “Where do you want this, _honey_?” he asks Basil.

“Next to my bunk is fine, _sugar_ ,” Basil plays along, still pink but always ready with a pet name. “Come on. I’ll show you exactly where I want it.”

“Enjoying being gross together,” James calls after them.

“Planning on it,” Rich calls back from Basil’s doorway, already half inside his berth. “Enjoy being alone and unloved.”

The door swings shut on James’ enraged, sputtering response, and Rich and Basil share a quiet giggle. “His _fucking face_ ,” Basil stage whispers. “I’m going to be thinking about that for months.”

“Now really, where do you want this?” Rich asks. “My wrist is starting to cramp up.” There’s no comfortable angle to hold something that size and weight, and he’s starting to feel it in his tendons.

“Corner by the bed is fine.” Basil kicks some jeans out of the way so Rich has room to set it down. It fits nicely and isn’t in the way.

With four plants, two of them actively flowering, Basil’s lair already smells better than it did this morning. He needs to do laundry, and he could stand to clear out some crumbs and empty snack containers, but it’s been significantly worse, even with two sweaty men standing in it.

“So. Do you want to stay and be gross with me for a little bit, or do you need to get cleaned up?” Basil asks.

“Hmm. Third option. We drop my plants off, go get cleaned up together, and then no one can get on our cases for being unwashed and antisocial. We’ll even share a shower, save water,” Rich says, oh so reasonably. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Scientifically proven to help reverse the effects of climate collapse. He hooks fingers through Basil’s belt loops and tows him in close.

“That _does_ sound sensible. Very prosocial. Extra environmentally conscious. Two for one good decision sale.” Basil is a beautiful shade of red and he has a bit of a situation going on in his jeans. “Let’s plan on that.”

James has cleared out of the hallway and they make it the couple feet across without having to fight anyone or explain what they’re doing and why they’re so grimy. It still feels like they’re getting away with something, sneaking from room to room like a couple of teenagers with contraband. He’s allowed to have these plants, Rich reminds himself. He paid for them and is invited, almost expected really, to personalize his space and keep it clean and comfortable. That includes the air, and he effectively has three little O2 scrubbers now.

The wisteria almost has to go on his desk. There’s nowhere else it’ll fit and be visible, and hiding it in the corner is a waste of a bonsai. It takes up about a third of the real estate and brightens the space considerably, transforming it from a bare, utilitarian desktop to a place where someone with interests and hobbies spends his work hours.

He drops his superfern in the corner nearest the window, then picks it up and tries it next to his bed, in the little pocket of space between his drawers and the head of his mattress. Decisions. It’s either going to be a pain to water, or might drop fronds on him when he sleeps. He puts it back in the corner by the window and tests hanging over the edge of his desk to reach it. It’s not terrible, but it kind of throws off the balance of the room to have the two biggest plants on one side and nothing on the other. Rich moves it back to the corner and tries to position it so that nothing is hanging over his head while he sleeps. 

“Rich? You okay?” Basil asks.

“Just trying to find the best spots for things.”

“It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

Rich looks at his plants. No, it doesn’t, but it’s possible to get it perfect, and it shouldn't even be that hard. Why wouldn’t he spend an extra minute getting it just right, if he could?

“It’s good enough. Find a spot for your little bamboo thing and come take a shower.” He holds up the ribbon grass. “If you hate it, you can change it later.”

Rich looks at his super fern. He’s going to hate it there. He can just tell. But Basil is right, he can move it later and figure it out when he’s not marinating in his own salt. He drops the ribbon grass on top of his locker, then moves it to his shelves because the locker isn’t bolted in as tight as it could be and rattles a little when he opens and shuts it. But is the ribbon grass going to get enough light, against the wall like that?

“Rich.”

“One second. I’m thinking.” Maybe the wisteria would be nice on the floor next to his bed, the fern could sit in the corner, and the ribbon grass might look more at home on his desk.

“Richard. I need a shower. You need- honestly you could use a full decontamination at this point. And I was promised environmentally conscientious water conservation,” Basil complains.

“You can go ahead. I’ll catch up once I figure this out.” Should he try it on the other side of the desk? But then the door won’t open all the way if there’s a fern in the way.

Basil sighs deeply. He looks around for a second, then drops to his knees and crawls under Rich’s desk, grumbling to himself. He works for a few minutes while Rich considers buying or fabricating a small table for the corner next to the window. He has the mechanical training to cut and bend steel, and he can probably find someone with more specialized training willing to weld a couple joints for him if he wants it to be extra sturdy. Rich isn’t sure how he would attach it to the bulkheads, though. Loose furniture is a hazard in a real storm, and he’s not up to date on the bolt down standards on the _Reliant_. And anyway, he’s back to the same problem of all his plants being in one corner.

“Come here for a second,” Basil says. “I need you to give this a shove.”

Rich plays along. He sets his feet and pushes on his desk. It resists for a second, then pops free of the wall with a horrifying crack and screeches a few inches across the floor.

“What?” Rich startles at the noise.

“Push it into the corner. I’m doing an experiment.” Basil drops a handful of wingnuts on the desk and rescues the super fern from the corner next to the desk. He relocates it to the newly vacated space near the door while Rich pushes his desk around. Basil looks at the bonsai, chin in hand, nods to himself, and moves it to the head of Rich’s bed.

“Okay, but-”

Basil grabs Rich’s pillows from the head of the bed and drops them at the foot, then yanks the bed spread down six inches so the foot is the new head.

He looks over his work, at Rich’s completely rearranged berth. “Thoughts?”

“Are you allowed to do that?” Rich asks.

“You’ll need to drill new holes for the desk and bolt it back in before the next storm, but no one said anything when I switched the orientation of my berth after, you know,” he waves his prosthetic hand, “I suddenly became right handed. It’s your space. Do what you want with it.” He looks up at Rich. “Is this okay?”

The wisteria is too low, lip of the pot on level with his mattress. He’s going to want it up on a table or shelf or something to display it, but at least it’s not right next to the fern now. He can reach his superfern without contorting, even if it is uncomfortably close to the door and a stupid, panicking part of his brain is certain it’s going to be kicked to pieces the next time anyone comes in his room. The ribbon grass is… fine. It’s fine. It’s not great or perfect and it doesn’t fill him with joy to see it wedged into his shelves, but it’s fine. He moves it to the end of his desk right under his window and feels better about it, like it could live there for a while.

“ _Can this be okay for now?”_ Basil asks.

Rich takes a breath and lets it out slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s good. Thanks.”

“Oh, thank god. I’m so gross I’m starting to _itch_.”

“Eugh.” Rich has been distracted, but now that he’s paying attention to it, his shirt is clinging to him in a variety of unpleasant ways. “Same.” He plucks at it and it makes a sticky crackling noise when it pulls free of his chest hair. He needs a shower, like, now. “Okay, yeah, let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for sticking with this fluff to the end! If you enjoyed it, leave me a comment or a kudos. 
> 
> You can join us on discord https://discord.gg/EAASeqJ to talk more with our little fandom.


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